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HipGeo has launched an API that allows iOS developers to the incorporate location-based features, such as geo tracking and tagging, of the HipGeo app, into their 3rd-party apps. This provides options which go beyond the check-in features that the FourSquare API offers. The toolkit also includes widgets that allow developers to incorporate location-based features in web apps and pages.

HipGeo widgets are the really easy way to add where to your when. With a little cut and paste magic, you can show where something happened with a cool popup map.

Like this:

Pioneer has released a cloud-based, Siri like platform, named Zypr. Zypr’s API provides developers with a toolkit to develop voice-enabled solutions for a variety of web applications, web services and social networks. By enabling single sign-on and multi-platform profiles, Zypr API makes voice-enabled web services mashups a possibility.

Zypr bridges the disparate worlds of mobile devices, Web apps, consumer electronics and automotive infotainment by bringing normalized Web services mashups to all of these platforms, with the added functionality of unique, conversational voice-control commands.

Image via Zypr

Using Zypr, developers can create mobile Apps that can use voice commands to access and mix a multitude of services, including Facebook and Amazon.

Web services currently supported by Zypr that can be mashed up and applied in new ways using voice control include Facebook®, Twitter®, Google®, Yelp®, AccuWeather®, INRIX® real-time and predictive traffic information, Slacker® Radio, Tuner2™ Radio, Wcities™, xAd™ and VoiceBox® with other services coming soon. As a Web-based API, Zypr works on all platforms supporting HTTPS access, including HTML5, iOS®, Android™ and Java®.

Like this:

Layar Vision, which is an extension of the Layar Augmented Reality browser, offers another means by which iOS and Android App developers can use Augmented Reality (AR) to interact with physical objects. Compared to the Qualcomm AR SDK, the Layar Vision API takes a different approach by pushing the image identification processes to the server-side and having a usage based freemium pricing mechanism.

Qualcomm‘s Augmented Reality (AR) SDK allows developers to design Android and iOS apps that can augment a live image from a camera with superimposed virtual content (such as graphics, data, media, etc). The SDK, which is distributed free, provides several features, including virtual buttons, 3D objects, frame markers and targets.

Here is a video of the sample apps that are provided in the SDK

The below video of the winners of the Qualcomm AR Challenge (from Feb 2011) helps to fully appreciate the power of this toolkit.

Following its hugely successful 50gb giveaway, Box.net is an attractive platform with which to integrate mobile apps. The Box.net mobile API augments its base API to provide additional resources to mobile developers. However, compared to the recently released Dropbox API, this toolkit seems to be lacking in some security and usability features. Guess an update is round the corner.